Catacombs Reference LibraryUK Press
London Evening News
Catacombs Reference LibraryThe Evening News was a major evening newspaper in London, published since 1881. By the 1970s sales were shrinking, and in 1974 it switched to tabloid format, before being merged into rival the Evening Standard in 1980. TV editor Patrick Stoddart would later work at the Sunday Times.
Evening News (London), Monday 24 March 1975 p11.
The black hole on TV created when Star Trek vanished is about to be filled by the most expensive sci-fi series ever made in Britain.
The £2½ million adventure saga, Space 1999, is in the final stages of production at Pinewood Studios.
As in Star Trek. the heroes will race superbeings from other planets. hostile monsters, and any number of natural disasters.
One big difference - Captain Kirk, Spock and Scottie travelled by starship, but the Space 1999 brigade are on a one-way trip, with the Moon as their rocket ship.
The ATV series, to be simultaneously premiered 101 countries in September, deals with the 300 men and women of Moonbase Alpha.
They are stranded in space when their chunk of Moon is blown out of Earth orbit.
The producers are Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, who made a name for themselves with puppet spectaculars.
Out go the wooden-headed heroes, and in come Mission Impossible stars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, ex-Fugitive hunter Barry Morse, and a host of heavily disguised guest stars including Anthony Valentine, Roy Dotrice, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Margaret Leighton.
See you can sort out who's who in our picture quiz on the right - answers below.
Evening News, Saturday 29 March 1975, p2. By Patrick Long. This same story was also run in other local papers on the same date, including the Reading Evening Post, Leicester Daily Mercury, Nottingham Evening Post and the Huddersfield Examiner. See more details in the catacombs 2001 article.
ATV are being sued by the giant American corporation Metro-Goldwyn Mayer over a new science fiction series.
The suit filed in Los Angeles, claims a million dollars (£400,000) damages from ATV and the Independent Television Corporation of Maryland, over the series Space 1999 to be screened here and in 100 other countries in September.
The grounds of the claim are that the title "misappropriated property rights," because it is too similar to MGM's award- winning film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The ATV series will star Peter Cushing, Margaret Leighton, Christopher Lee, Anthony Valentine and the husband and wife team of Martin Landau and Barbara Bain (Mission Impossible).
Sir Lew Grade, boss of ATV, has spent £2,500,000 on the series with his partners, Italian State television.
A later edition adds the following lines to the story
A spokesman for the Birmingham-based ATV said today: Our legal advisers have not yet been officially advised of the suit."
All 24 one-hour episodes were in the can when filming finished last month.
The Independent Television Corporation of Maryland is a subsidiary of ATV and looks after its interests in the States.
Evening News, Tuesday 7 August 1975, p11. "In Town" column by John Robbins
Sad news from Space. The puppeteer film-producing husband and wife team of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, who created TV classics like Thunderbirds have split up professionally.
The reason is that they have split up privately, too.
I asked Anderson what went wrong. I wish I knew," he said. "We are both living in the same area near Gerrards Cross, but I don't know if we can get back together."
They started out together some 12 years ago with £500 capital and moved into Pinewood studios two years ago to work on a £2 million space-fiction series called Space 1999.
Now Gerry has formed a new company to work on his own. "I hope Sylvia will carry on working but not as a rival." he said.
The Andersons' most famous character, the glamorous Lady Penelope, was based on Sylvia and the voice was hers.
They are both 45 and have a son of eight.
Evening News, Saturday 6 September 1975 p12 in TV listings. Dr Who starts 5 minutes earlier on BBC 1
5.50 SPACE 1999. Breakaway. Nonsensically early slot for what could be a very promising new series. Today we see the moon sent hurtling out of orbit by a spectacular atomic accident, and we get to know the main characters, two of whom, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain spend lot of time staring meaningfully at each other. But the effects are good, the standard of writing more than adequate, and the weeks of drama ahead look quite beguiling. Try it for size.
Evening News, Saturday 27 September 1975 p12 in TV listings
5.50 SPACE 1999. The stranded moon travellers face a new catastrophe every week but do they have to be so humourless and wooden? Tonight Moonbase Alpha is attacked by an unnamed planet and Anthony Valentine and Isla Blair join the cast as bald-headed aliens.
Evening News, Friday 10 October 1975 p17 in Letters Page
Would you please inform the BBC and ATV that they are putting the two best shows on at the same time? I'm a fan of Dr. Who and Space 1999 but it's difficult to watch both at the same time!
Alison Plight, aged 13, Belgrave Gardens, Southgate.
Evening News, Tuesday 28 October 1975 p9 on the Selfridges Christmas exhibition
Selfridges have lift-off for a space-age Christmas complete with a dramatic walk-about on Moon Base Alpha.
Children visiting the store from November 3 will have a guided tour of space with visits to Alpha Base and the Space Centre.
The West End store are taking their theme from ATV's series Space 1999.
They will also be shown beam and many other the wonders of the laser exciting attractions. [sic]
Father Christmas has been given his own section in space and children can visit him there in normal store hours.
Evening News, Saturday 29 November 1975 p12 in TV listings
5.50 SPACE 1999. Nobody seems to have realised yet that this adult and often violent series was never meant to be shown in a children's time-slot, despite its Thunderbird lineage. Tonight a man returns from the dead bringing the castaways' promise of a new life on an Earth-like world. But their hopes, inevitably, are dashed. Martin Landau and Barbara Bain mope; Richard Johnson guests.
Evening News, Tuesday 9 December 1975 p24, Money Pages. Omnia produced a few more games (Geronimo, Juggernaut, Nationwide, Disney The Rescuers) plus jigsaws before ending in 1978.
Caption: "No, no. it's your turn to be Wedgie," City reporter Roger Kidd (left) takes on Jerry Fitchett (centre) and Richard Guignard, founders of Omnia Pastimes, at a game of North Sea Oil.
Richard Guignard along with his partners Jerry Fitchett and Graham Collier will shortly be moving into their first office. writes Roger Kidd.
"Granted we need the space," Richard says. "And the neighbours were beginning to talk about the comings and goings at my house."
It was from his house in May that the trio launched their games business Omnia Pastimes and have operated from there since.
Confident
Over the past eight months. with business spinning ahead. sales have reached £150,000 with possibly another £5,000 by the year end.
For the next year with Omnia trading from January to December. Richard Guignard is quietly confident that with the present range of four games having a full run and others ready to be introduced, turnover should be around the £500,000 mark.
Omnia was successful from the outset with its very first game North Sea Oil-designed for teenage and adult market.
Its Space 1999 is also a money spinner and to date both have sold more than 34,000 units,
The games, which are designed by Richard. Omnia's managing director, get a big boost from television.
The company has ATV licensing for Space 1999 and among next year's new games. Magpie will be done jointly with Thames TV and Sweeney and The Wonderful World of Disney will also have TV links.
Richard tells me they have had plenty of inquiries from overseas including Japan, Mexico, Germany, India and Canada.
"Obviously being our we had first year we had to politely decline but next year we plan a big drive for exports," he said.
One spin-off for North Sea Oil came from Thyssen Rheinstahl Offshore of Germany who have taken a large order to hand out to customers this Christmas.
Richard is a chartered accountant and was formerly with Peat Marwick. Jerry Fitchett is marketing director having worked in this capacity with another games company while Graham Collier tends to the finances.
The trio say they are all in hock up to their necks, having had to raise around £50,000 to get Omnia off the ground but with the right moves they are sure came from to soon recoup this.
Evening News, Monday 12 April 1976 p14
Fancy Smith has come a long way since Z Cars. Brian Blessed, early star of the Newtown nick show, shrugged off his bluebottle image to concentrate on more diverse acting roles. And you can't get a a lot more diverse than he does in an episode of the new Space 1999 series, currently in production at Pinewood. He plays an alien of some sort hence the ritzy make-up job. At least you can't call it plain-clothes work.
Evening News, Wednesday 14 July 1976 p13 in Ad Lib, John Blake's guide to living in London. We have not yet identified Dena Faust in an episode.
The heatwave doesn't worry leggy Dena Faust one bit. She lives by a seven-acre private lake at Eagware, and when things get too hot she can always jump in to cool off.
Just lately, though, there hasn't been much time for water- nymphing. Dena- who is 20 tomorrow- has been busy appearing in the TV series Space 1999,
Evening News Friday 8 October 1976 p11
Pinewood film studios, said to be heading for collapse in recent years, is on the crest of a boom again.
Current films being produced at the Buckinghamshire studios, which celebrate their 40th anniversary this week, include the latest James Bond saga, The Spy Who Loved Me.
Bubbling
On L Stage they are in the the middle of shooting a space-age thriller, Space 1999 with "alien superwoman" Catherine Schell dodging through the moonscape.
On Stage J, Patrick Macnee and his two new partners, Gareth Hunt and Joanna Lumley are finding fresh twists for the new Avengers series.
Actor David Niven, in shaggy whiskers, is filming a new Disney comedy called Candleshoe, and a new Carry On comedy is coming up, titled Carry On Again Nurse.
The future for Pinewood looks better than ever. Independent producer Michael Klinger has just signed a contract with a total budget of �11 million to make four films at the studios.
Among them are The Limey with Michael Caine, and the adventure drama Eagle in the Sky from Wilbur Smith's novel.
Roman Polanski's historical yarn The Pirates is scheduled for the New Year, and the £2 million political thriller When the Kissing Had to Stop is due to begin in March.
General Manager, Mr. Cyril Howard said: "Pinewood is bubbling. I'm not a clairvoyant, but from the books we've got work stretching right through next year."
The set for the James Bond film, is the biggest ever built. Conceived by "think big" designer Ken Adam, it is large enough to house three submarines- which is exactly what it will do when it is flooded next month after the film unit return from location shooting in Sardinia and Egypt.
Foreign stars like Marlon Brando, Sophia Loren and Gregory Peck have all acted there.
The Pinewood story has survived the good and lean years through four decades.
Carry On producer Peter Rogers said: "It's like home to me." I've made 50 films here, and I can tell you it's a happy place."
As Trevor Howard put it in his foreword to a book on Pinewood, Movies from the Mansion (£6-95), out this month: "It is a pleasure to go to Pinewood for the personal touch. May it never close,"
Evening News Friday 15 October 1976 p21. "William Hall the man the big stars talk to"
Caption: Catherine Schell... wearing the spots of sci-fi stardom.
Despite appearances to the contrary in Space 1999, ITV's sci-fi series, Catherine Schell wishes it to be known that she is not, repeat not, Superwoman.
"I hate to think of myself as a super-lady," she said: "To be really exciting, a woman has to have some sort of vulnerability. Maya, the girl I play, is very innocent, very naive.
"The fact that she has powers of molecular transformation just makes her different, that's all."
Indeed it does, as you'll know if you're one of the addicts of the programme, which is designed to rivet the kids to their seats on wet Saturday mornings, while stretching credulity and imagination as far as the moon-and beyond.
For the past year, the aristocratic beauty, born Baroness Catherine Schell von Bauschlott Nagiroya in Hungary, has been filming in space at Pinewood Studios, turning herself into a tigress, a lioness, an eagle, even a bee to get out of awkward situations.
"I do a great deal of it tongue-in-cheek." she said.
She sat in the restaurant at Pinewood, auburn hair in a long pony tall, with eight curious spots instead of eyebrows like tiny stitched warts above each blue eye.
"In fact," she said. "I enjoy the part because I've always considered myself liberated, and Maya is very independent.
"It's got nothing to do with male chauvinism or women's lib- I don't support either. I'm all for equality of the sexes, but the fact is that men can do certain things better because they're faster and stronger.
"I don't feel any desire to dominate. But I've always done exactly as I please. I've never leaned on anyone for anything- not since I was 14 and left home to fend for myself."
Catherine and her parents fled Hungary when the Russians invaded. The family settled in Austria and Catherine built a career for herself in films and TV, predictably in upper-class roles.
She showed her taste for comedy in the last Clouseau romp The Return Of The Pink Panther, with Peter Sellers.
She has shaken off the blue-blood image and made her life and career in London, mainly because she detested the jet-set crowd who hung around her. Catherine married actor William Marlowe eight years ago, at the age of 22. Now they are separated, and she lives alone in Pulham.
"I was miserable and lonely at first," she said.
"I think anyone is, when marriage fails. But I found I could take care of myself, and suddenly I've realised I don't have to answer to anybody any more.
"That's liberation. Friends who see me now can't believe I'm the same person.
"I don't go raving around all the time. My life-style is very quiet... the ideal evening is to go to the theatre then to have a lovely, late, intimate supper somewhere.
"If any man comes into my life now he must have a sense of humour and kindness- they're the two essential ingredients."
Evening News, Thursday 18 November 1976 p3. Vilma Riley appeared in Devil's Planet, which had just completed filming.
Charm and punishment go hand-in-hand in Gerry Anderson's TV series, Space 1999. One of the jailers who is given the whip-hand in a forthcoming episode. Devil's Moon, is shapely Wilma Riley.
Figure-hugging catsuits, in brightest red, and gold helmets are regulation dress for the warders of the future. If crime figures soar the authorities will have only themselves to blame.
The eye-catching outfits are the work of Emma Porteous, costume designer for the series said to be costing more than £3 million to produce.
It goes out on the ITV network and stars husband- and-wife team Martin Landau and Barbara Bain along with glamorous Catherine Schell.
Next Saturday's episode, The A-8 Chrysalis. has a more warlike theme. An unidentified planet bombards the moon with electrical waves.
And when a Space trio set out to investigate their way is barred by a circle of moons.
Maybe they would be better off in jail.
Picture by Bill Johnson
Evening News, Wednesday 19 January 1977 p9. Beverley Keys was in two episodes. Queen Kong, starring Rula Lenska and Valerie Leon, was never released because of a lawsuit from Dino De Laurentiis, who was making the King Kong movie released in 1978.
Those with a sense of humour won't want to miss the film Queen Kong, a giant sized send-up of the male of the species.
Another good reason not to miss it is Beverley Keys who, although only 20, is fast making a name for herself in the screen world.
Beverley has had roles in Rollerball and Carry On Behind and on TV in The Sweeney, Space 1999 and The New Avengers series.
Away from the cameras Bev likes to take it easy at her home in Walton-on-Thames although in warmer months relaxing usually means taking part in some strenuous activity like lawn tennis or rowing.
Evening News, Wednesday 23 March 1977 p16, by Patrick Stoddart
Ever see a science fiction show called Space 1999?
Possibly not, unless you had nothing better to do on Saturday mornings other than watch television.
Because that's where ITV consigned Lord Grade's massive £4 million answer to Star Trek soon after its launch. Now the series has been scrapped altogether, due to lack of network and foreign interest, and that is angering the show's small but vocal band of loyal fans.
Mr. Haydn K. Pole, of Leicester, has mounted a campaign to save the series, and it will almost certainly find favour among the large section of the viewing public who still think that it was a national disgrace of the Americans to scrap Star Trek. Space 1999 came from the Thunderbirds stable- Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's space puppet factory- and it some- times looked a lot like a puppet show itself. Never were space ships and people seen in the same shot, largely because the spacecraft were mini-models.
But despite its short- comings and the fairly abysmal acting of its stars, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, the series was the most ambitious sci-fi exploit attempted on British TV, and Mr. Pole reckons there's still an audience for it.
Write (politely) to ATV. he urges, if you want it saved for posterity.
And don't write Space 1999 on the envelope he says, with commendable slyness. If you do, he fears ATV won't bother to open the letter.
Mind you, for a man with such a fetish about the future, Mr. Pole is a bit of a pessimist. "Write today," he says, Tomorrow may be too late."
Evening News, Friday 1 April 1977 p21, by Patrick Stoddart
Life takes curious turns for film producers. Gerry Anderson, for instance, is currently seeing one dream die and a forgotten idea come back to life.
His Space 1999 series, condemned to death in the unseen fastnesses of Saturday morning television, is soon to vanish forever.
Meanwhile U.F.O. (ITV 11.40 tonight) is enjoying a curious success he would never have thought possible.
U.F.O. was the first science fiction series involving real people and not puppets that Anderson produced, some six years ago.
Like Space 1999, it was buried alive by the TV companies and few people ever saw it.
"But I hear there's a sudden up-turn in interest both here and in America," says a bewildered Gerry.
"It's like a lot of sci-fi series Star Trek included. It had a lame start and found itself an audience a long time too late.
There has always been a strong, almost fanatical following for U.F.O., only there weren't quite enough of them to make it a hit."
U.F.O., in case you still haven't been hooked, is about an intrepid band of scientists whose lives are dedicated to fending off attacks from a sinister alien civilisation.
The space visitors use all kinds of tricks to pierce our defences, but Ed Bishop and the team are always too sharp for them.
So the fight goes on-all of it in a complex disguised cunningly to look like Pinewood film studios, where indeed it was made.
"I'm working on a project to replace Space 1999," says Gerry Anderson at his Pinewood office.
"But if anyone asked me, I'd do more U.F.O.s. I thought they were rather good too, as a matter of fact."
Evening News, Friday 22 April 1977 p3 by Carole Dawson
Parents of children at the exclusive American School in St. John's Wood are preparing to take on the world's oil giants in a High Court battle.
They are angry at what they see as a move to turn the school which has had the children of famous film stars, including Julie Andrews, Lauren Bacall and Carroll Baker, among its pupils, into one only for corporation kids."
Martin Landau, star of Mission Impossible and Space 1999 has a daughter at the school.
The parents say that the huge corporations which had donated money to the school over the years are now demanding that their children be given all the coveted places.
The only "outsiders" allowed in will be the children of United States Embassy employees.
Parents who are not attached to the big companies like Esso, Gulf and Mobil, have now been asked to give a 1.000 dollars (£582) re-entry fee by May 1 to keep their children at the school
The problem is that demand for places at the school- its fees are 2,700 dollars (£1,570) a year- far outweighs the number available.
Headmaster Mr. Jack Harrison said today: "It is true that if children of equal scholastic ability were competing for one place then the child sponsored by the company would be given priority.
"The reason for asking parents of non-sponsored children to make a sponsorship donation- it can be paid as 250 dollars (£145) every six months for two years- is to equalise the cost of running the school.
"But it is absolutely untrue that only the children of multi-national company employees will be considered."
Martin Landau said today: "The school is excellent. It offers a very good education and it has a cross section of pupils.
Mr. Charles Zub, who runs a management consultancy, has a daughter at the school. He said parents fear that the quality and reputation of the school would go down if it took only children of corporation parents.
Evening News, Saturday 3 March 1979 p3
Sarah Bullen, youngest member of an equestrian family who gave up competitive riding to become an actress plays her first lead part in Granada TV's new seven part drama series House of Caradus.
She stars as Helena Caradus, a partner in a family firm of auctioneers in the old market town of Chester.
Sarah, seen leaving her home in Belgravia, will be working on the series until next Wednesday,
Her most recent TV series have been in The Sandbaggers, as a Russian agent, and in Space 1999.
Space: 1999 copyright ITV Studios Global Entertainment